Little George Ship Revolt: Ninety-Six Captive Africans Seize Slave Ship and Sail Home

On June 6, 1730, ninety-six captive Africans aboard the British slave ship Little George, bound from the Bonnana Islands off the coast of Guinea to Rhode Island, rose up at approximately 4:00 a.m. Several captives freed themselves from iron shackles, broke through the ship's bulkhead, seized weapons, and killed three crew watchmen. They constructed an improvised explosive from gunpowder pressed into a bottle and threatened to ignite it; faced with the ship's possible destruction, the remaining crew surrendered. With no sailing or navigation training, the Africans turned the ship around and guided it back across the Atlantic, landing at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. Both the liberated Africans and the British crew abandoned the ship. The Little George revolt stands as one of the most successful at-sea uprisings in the history of the transatlantic slave trade.